Except there was a slight problem. Half of them had tickets to North Berwick, and half of them had tickets to Berwick-upon-Tweed. If you don't know the geography of South-Eastern Scotland, there is 35 miles between the two places.
Indeed, Berwick-upon-Tweed is in England.
It transpired that Parents and Grandparents had booked their caravans separately, using only the word "Berwick". The Grandparents had therefore booked North Berwick, the Parents had gone with Berwick-upon-Tweed. As the realisation dawned on them, I decided to creep away quietly.
It's not the first time I've come across the confusion. A couple of months back I had to call the British Transport Police (BTP). They have centralised their call centre in London, so instead of ringing the local bobbies we now have to phone a dispatcher 500 miles away. As my next stop was Berwick-upon-Tweed, I told her that's where I wanted the police to attend the train. (Incidentally, there are no BTP officers in Berwick, they have to rely on Northumbria Police).
After a 3 minute phone call relaying all the necessary details, the call centre operator said back to me: "Okay, the police will meet you in Berwick, Dorset in 10 minutes"...then hung up the phone.
Despite the occasional call-centre snafu, the BTP are for the most part very good at their jobs. They've had a budget boost recently and a new pro-active Chief Constable, and it reflects in the new statistics showing that crime on the railways has dropped 7.3%.
The only crime that has increased are sexual offences, by 0.7%. I wonder if this is because there has been a culture change and more people feel they can report it now?
One other surprising line from the RailNews article -
“Research from Passenger Focus shows that young men under 26 are most concerned [about travelling at night]...They are, apparently, the most likely to be assaulted, so perhaps I should begin keeping an eye out for them on my night-time trains as well as the lone women?
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